48 Hours Without Power
Updated: 1:45am UK, Wednesday 25 December 2013
By Anna Botting, Sky News presenter
We live at the top of a hill in Surrey. Our power went off just after 2pm on the 23rd December.
It's still off as I write this, late on Christmas Eve, with no prospects of anything being sorted out before tomorrow - Christmas Day.
How I wish my Christmas present list had read like this:
- Candles – lots, of the non-perfumed variety
- One wind-up radio
- A camping light
- And a chain-saw – to cut through all the trees that are down.
It is amazing what electricity does for us. You don't realise until you don't have it anymore.
Fridges, full of Christmas food, are gradually warming to unsafe levels. Christmas lights, that twinkled so brightly, lie dormant.
And in the gloom, with no television, no radio, no lights to read by, no internet, no phone, there is absolutely nothing to do...except listen to the wind battering the windows and the trees whipping and the bins rolling around the lane. How did people cope in the old days?
Thankfully it's still relatively mild, but my 16-month-old baby's hands were still icy. We'd bought a camping stove for the last storm - St Jude's. It's been a God-send.
We can make cups of tea and cook-up some soup or pasta for the little one. The baby had a bath by candlelight, which was lovely for her.
But downstairs, my newly-walking toddler stumbled around in the gloom, hitting walls and furniture as the candles burned down.
Eventually we're left with just two; one of them barely flickering. It's really dark on top of our hill. My other half decides to do his Christmas wrapping but he can barely see what the present is, let alone the label that he attempts to write.
There is nothing for it, but to give up and go to bed early.
Next day the neighbours come round. The 81-year-old with a stomach bug who's staying in bed to keep warm, the father and grandfather who have the whole family due at their house for Christmas Day - who report seeing a power cable down at the back of their house.
The electricity company had told us it was an underground cabling issue, presumably caused by flooding, but clearly the wind has wrought havoc too.
They optimistically told us (by their text messaging service) that it would be sorted by 5pm yesterday, then 10pm. Now I'm guessing it'll be Boxing Day.
I always wonder why people go on about their freezers in power cuts. But then I remember the butchery course I bought my partner for his birthday and the two beautifully butchered joints he brought back that are sitting in the freezer waiting for a Sunday roast.
He confidently tells me that modern freezers keep things frozen for 24 hours. But now we're already at 32 hours and counting.
I attempt a shower before heading to work. But of course the electric shower pump doesn't operate and I have to wash my hair over the bath with now freezing cold water.
I haven't seen the news since yesterday lunchtime; the power cut means a news blackout. Now heading home, I am armed with torch to creep in, in the dark.
Merry Christmas - especially to all those who can't read this now.
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